RULE CHANGES
· "Scoring of a Dramatic Picture" becomes "Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture."

SINS OF OMISSION
Picture: Sullivan's Travels, To Be or Not to Be, The Palm Beach Story, Now, Voyager
Actor: Joseph Cotten - The Magnificent Ambersons, Joel McCrea - Sullivan's Travels
Actress: Carole Lombard (posthumous) - To Be or Not to Be
Song: "At Last," "I Don't Want to Walk Without You," "I Remember You," "Moonlight Becomes You," "Tangerine," "I Had the Craziest Dream"

ALWAYS A BRIDESMAID...
Agnes Moorehead lost for what was considered her finest performance in The Magnificent Ambersons. She would strike out three more times: Mrs. Parkington (1944), Johnny Belinda (1948), and Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).

UNMENTIONABLES
· Jack Warner premeired Yankee Doodle Dandy in May with a flag-waving benefit at New York's Hollywood Theatre. The best seats went for $25,000. From this one showing, he made $5,750,000 for the U.S. Treasury. He didn't do poorly himself either; the George M. Cohan biopix became the studio's top grosser.
· Yankee Doodle Dandy was Cagney's last movie as a contract actor at Warner Bros. He made headlines by forming his own production group with his brother -- who had produced Yankee Doodle Dandy -- and President Roosevelt personally requested that Cagney perform some of the numbers from the film for his birthday party.
· Hollywood's Hays Office objected to the Germans being referred to as "bloody bastards" in Noël Coward's In Which We Serve. The New Yorker observed, "Regarding Noël Coward's difficulties with the the Hays Office over several earthy words in the sound track of his new war film, we can only say that we sympathize with the poor bastard."
· On December 7, the Academy moved the eligibility deadline from January 12 back to December 31. MGM was able to rush Greer Garson's Random Harvest into one of it L.A. theatres to meet the deadline, but In Which We Serve, with no big studio backing, was stuck with its early January Hollywood premiere and was, consequently, not eligible for consideration for 1942.
· RKO cut Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons from its original two-and-a-half hour running time down to 88 minutes and released it on a double bill with Lupe Velez's Mexican Spitfire. So much for Hollywood's wunderkind.
· Teresa Wright received a Supporting Actress nomination for her first film in 1941, The Little Foxes, with Bette Davis. By 1942, she was one of Hollywood's most sought after actresses. Prior to Pride of the Yankees, she played an ingenue in Mrs. Miniver and upcoming was Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, shortchanged out of the 1942 Oscar® race by the same timetable switch that had knocked out In Which We Serve. Her two nominations for the year duplicated Fay Bainter's double-nom for 1938.
· With fellow Warners star John Garfield, Bette Davis organized a non-profit coffee-and-doughnuts nightclub for servicemen in Southern California. The two of them talked dozens of personalities into participating in the Hollywood Canteen -- the soldiers loved being served refreshments by Marlene Dietrich, dancing with Joan Crawford and gawking at Humphrey Bogart doing the dishes.
· Although born in Ireland, Greer Garson was now 100% American. One columnist wrote, "Garson, grateful for everything this land has brought her, says she doesn't want to do anything but stay here and make movies, and sell war bonds between pictures." She did do at least one other thing -- she fell in love with Richard Ney, the actor who had played her son in Mrs. Miniver. At 24, Ney was nine years younger than Garson, and the image of Mrs. Miniver in a passionate embrace with her offspring proved too tempting for journalists.
· The Coconut Grove was packed with celebrants, foreign diplomats, military officials and government representatives. The Hollywood Reporter complained, "Never in the history of Academy dinners was there such a compression of tables and people. It was almost impossible to get through the aisles and, with tables stacked up as far as the bandstand, there wasn't a foot of space on the dance floor."
· The ceremony opened with Jeanette MacDonald singing every possible verse of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Marine Pvt. Tyrone Power and army Pvt. Alan Ladd brought out the colors.
· Irving Berlin presented the Best Song Award to himself. "It's someone I've known a good many years," the presenter said. "He's a nice kid and I think he deserves it."
· Best Director William Wyler's wife accepted his Award. She told the audience that Lt. Col. Wyler was busy filming a bombing raid over Germany.
· To compensate for the eligibility deadline switcheroo, the Academy gave Noël Coward a Special Award for In Which We Serve.
· In its second year, the Documentary category swelled to 25 nominees in order to acknowledge every foreign ally, every military branch, and every studio that had ever produced a documentary.
· After Gary Cooper announced James Cagney's win for Best Actor, Cagney bounded to the dais amid whistles and cheers. One person commented, "You don't have to be from MGM to win."
· Cagney ended his acceptance speech with Cohan's famous line, "My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you."
· Bob Hope closed the evening with, "Don't forget to tip your waiters. You never know who is on your draft board."
· Mary Pickford was so disgusted with being seated in the back of the room, "in Arizona" as she put it, that she promptly resigned from the Academy because "the big studios buy up blocks of reservations and squeeze everybody else out."
· In no time, Hollywoodites started "remembering" that Greer Garson bored everyone for over an hour and her "I am practically unprepared" speech became a Hollywood legend.